Ophelia's Madness
by Rhiannon A. Christy
Summary: There's rosemary, that's for remembrance pray, love, remember: Jareth watches on as Sarah delves into madness. Oneshot inspired by Hamlet.


_There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember:_

Sarah's voice rose up through the small park where she often went to walk. The trees were as green as any summer's leaves, and all the flowers were abloom.

The heady scent of roses filled the mid-day air with perfume so sweet that all other flora grow green-eyed at one smell of the bouquet. The swans that hither in the pond swam entangled with their necks in a lover's embrace, looked not on the girl that danced up and down the grassy grove.

_"How you turn my world  
You precious thing.  
You starve and near exhaust me."_ Eyes like jewels plucked from the water's deep gazed up at the obelisk that loomed with cold stone over her. Her feet pounded wet and dew sodden ground as her body moved like the wind, never knowing which direction it should go.

She sang with passion, and yet with sorrow. It had been not a year since the girl of little more than her childhood years left the Underground. Her days filled with grief much in the likeness of mourning. For what her family could not fathom.

Not a seven-night had passed before the child-maiden grew weary in her disposition. By and by she altered till not one who neared her could deny the state of her mind.

The girl with hair like cherry wood laughed as she danced, her old dress covered in stains and her feet bare and cold smeared with mud. She ceased her singing, her feet planted firmly on the cold wet ground.

"You left me…He left me…" Her utterance changing to a fit of laughter as her moist eyes fell on the elegant form of an owl.

"Like others before you left me. No..no no no, I cry not for you. And yet against all that I am I do. I waited and yet you came not to me." A heart filled with sadness as a man in likeness of an owl watched the girl-woman. She had the Ophelia's Madness. She came often to the little grove, and in her madness sang the songs he sang for her.

He had wanted to come, wanted with all that his heart was made of to go to her side and in the course of a night marry her and bring her home. But life is a funny thing, were it as simple as want and need no one would go thusly into madness. No, life was a funny thing, and he could not for all his kingdom go to her. Even in her hour of need.

_"There's such a sad love  
Deep in your eyes.  
A kind of pale jewel  
Open and closed  
Within your eyes.  
I'll place the sky  
Within your eyes."_ Again the child-maiden sang, her body moving ever closer to the pond. The owl watched with a burning heart that threatened to consume him with its desperate flames. Sarah placed one foot then the other atop the stone ledge of the bridge. She looked out with a weary heart and a clouded mind.

_"As the pain sweeps through,  
Makes no sense for you.  
Every thrill is gone.  
Wasn't too much fun at all,  
But I'll be there  
for you-ou-ou  
As the world falls down."_ She held out her hands to the wind. Her tears like raindrops of a spring's mourning shower.

"As the world falls down…..falling….falling…." Her whispered words lifted up into the air as the clear waters gathered her into their chilling arms. Her lungs filling with its blue-clear fluid as she fell down within the depths.

The sorrowful cry of the owl sounded through the grove, often had he pictured her in his arms. But no more, no more. Her fate resided not with him, but to the minnows and leaches.

The owl took flight, his wings like the leaves. And had one taken time to look their heart would have wrenched for to see an owl cry. 

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Author's Note: Ok don't kill me!!!!!! The thing is I was watching Hamlet and this idea sort of popped into my head, I got up in the middle of the night and wrote this really quick. I don't think it comes across quite like I was wanting it, but still I like it. But really don't kill me, I have to every now and then write one where things don't work out.


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